DEPARTMENT OF POLITICAL SCIENCE TOWN HALL TRANSPARENCY? THE IMPACT OF FREEDOM OF INFORMATION ON LOCAL GOVERNMENT IN ENGLAND BEN WortHY, JIM AMOS, Robert HAZELL AND GABRIELLE BOURKE The Constitution Unit The Constitution Unit Town Hall Transparency? The Impact of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 on Local Government in England Ben Worthy, Jim Amos, Robert Hazell and Gabrielle Bourke Constitution Unit December 2011 ISBN: 978-1-903903-62-9 Published by The Constitution Unit Department of Political Science UCL (University College London) 29-30 Tavistock Square London WC1H 9QU Tel: 020 7679 4977 Fax: 020 7679 4978 Email: [email protected] Web: www.ucl.ac.uk/constitution-unit/ © The Constitution Unit, UCL 2011 This report is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. First published December 2011 2 Contents List of Tables .............................................................................................................. 4 Executive Summary ................................................................................................... 5 1. Methods ................................................................................................................. 8 1.1 Official Documents ........................................................................................... 8 1.2 Interviews ......................................................................................................... 8 1.3 Survey of FOI Officers ...................................................................................... 8 1.4 Survey of Requesters ....................................................................................... 8 1.5 Media Analysis ................................................................................................. 9 2. FOI and Local Government: A Special Case? ...................................................... 10 2.1 Rising Request Levels .................................................................................... 10 2.2 The Varieties of Local Government................................................................. 11 2.3 Local Government Reform .............................................................................. 11 3. FOI and Local Government: the Objectives .......................................................... 13 3.1 Has FOI Increased Transparency? ................................................................. 13 The New Transparency Agenda ....................................................................... 13 3.2 Has FOI Increased Local Accountability? ....................................................... 15 3.3 Has FOI Improved Local Decision-making? .................................................... 16 3.4 Has FOI Increased Public Understanding of Decision-making? ...................... 18 3.5 Does FOI Increase Public Participation in Local Government? ....................... 19 3.6 Has FOI Increased Trust in Local Government? ............................................. 20 4. The impact on Local Government ......................................................................... 23 4.1 Leadership ...................................................................................................... 23 4.2 Service Delivery.............................................................................................. 24 4.3 Two Areas of Tension: Private Companies and the Media .............................. 24 4.4 The Requester (see also appendix 1) ............................................................. 26 5. Conclusion: The Future ........................................................................................ 28 5.1 Political Reform .............................................................................................. 28 5.2 Open Data and Technology ............................................................................ 28 5.3 Financial Restrictions ..................................................................................... 28 5.4 The Impact of the changes ............................................................................. 29 Appendix 1: Requesters and Requests to Local Government ................................... 30 Appendix 2: What Does FOI Cost? ........................................................................... 35 3 Appendix 3: FOI in Irish Local Government .............................................................. 37 Bibliography ............................................................................................................. 41 List of Tables Table 1: Numbers of requests to central and local government in the UK 2005-2009 .. 10 Table 2 and 3: Requester type to English local government 2005-2009 compared with Irish local government 1998-2009 ............................................................................... 11 Table A1.6: Have the objectives of FOI been achieved based on the most recent response you received? .............................................................................................. 33 Table A1.7: Sample of FOI Requests Analysed by Level of Specificity ........................ 33 Table A2.1: Costs of processing FOI requests around the world ................................. 35 Table A2.2: Cost per FOI request in British Pounds .................................................... 36 Table A3.1: Level of FOI requests made to Irish local authorities ............................... 37 Table A3.2: Benefits of FOI for Irish local government (suggested answers) .............. 38 Table A3.4: Benefits of FOI for Irish local government (open-ended answers) ........... 38 Table A3.5: Challenges of FOI for Irish local government (suggested answers) .......... 38 Table A3.6: Challenges of FOI for Irish local government (open-ended answers) ....... 38 Table A3.7: Has FOI led to non-recording of information? ........................................... 39 Table A3.8: Has FOI led people to seek information for themselves? .......................... 39 Table A3.9: Has FOI had a positive effect on your organisation? ................................ 39 4 Executive Summary Transparency Local government was already very open. FOI has further increased transparency but as an ‘add on’ to existing mechanisms. As with central government, FOI has increased proactive disclosure, despite the failure of the Act’s publication schemes, and helped a more open culture to develop. FOI works with the continuing development of new websites and applications such as Openly Local or hyper local sites. Use of the £500 spending data to date has been uneven. Some authorities have had a great deal of interest from the local press and some virtually none. It does not appear to have had an impact on FOI request numbers. Accountability FOI has increased accountability at local level but in ways officials and politicians don’t always see, either as part of building up a ‘bigger picture’ (e.g. a jigsaw effect) or alongside other mechanisms, especially the local media, consultations, and campaigns by NGOs. Decision-making, Public Understanding and Participation FOI has not improved the quality of decision-making but a chilling effect can be seen in a few politically sensitive cases. FOI has increased public understanding of decision-making in a ‘picture building’ way at a very low level such as a decision around the granting of a licence for one particular shop. Generally, few people are interested in local government except for when there is a controversy e.g. a local leisure centre or amenity is closed. FOI has been used by NGOs and for particular campaigns but has had little general impact on public participation because few participate. Trust FOI has not increased or decreased trust in local government. National media reporting of FOI stories has been largely negative (e.g. on salaries, wasting money). The local and regional press is variable in terms of use, angle and topic. Assessing the impact for local government is different because not all FOI information from the council is actually about the council e.g. some information is about schools, others about local restaurants. A number of officials felt local government trust was influenced by authority performance and ‘community visibility’ rather than openness. 5 Leadership, Service Delivery and Partnership FOI has not impacted upon how local government works. Despite the focus on senior salaries local leadership has not changed due to FOI Service delivery has been largely unaffected as requests are rarely made about it. The two areas of tension are media use and reporting of FOI and partnership with private companies. Analysis of media use shows that a small proportion of requests cause most of the problems, i.e. those that get into newspapers and make headlines. Authorities have had varied experiences with the private bodies they work with passing information in response to requests. Some of the more ‘public facing’ ones are happy to share information whilst others are nervous and resistant. Requests and Requesters There is heavy use of FOI by a wide range of businesses at local level Rising request levels appear to be driven by increased awareness of FOI and media stories in the national press (especially MPs’ expenses)